Overclocked (2 page)

The shud­ders fi­nally abated and she began rid­ing the wave of post-co­ital bliss, fi­nally aware of the sweat bead­ing on her skin and dampen­ing her hair. She didn’t care. Carl gently pulled out of her. When he left the bed, Tania felt the mat­tress lift slightly but she didn’t stir. With her muscles turned to mush, she didn’t think she was cap­able of a single move­ment. When he re­turned, he had some­thing warm and damp in his hand. It was prob­ably a face towel he had taken from the rack in her bath­room. With slow strokes, he wiped her clean, the rough cot­ton tick­ling her still swollen clit­oris.

“If you keep do­ing that,” she slurred, “I’ll be ready for more ac­tion within minutes.”

He chuckled. “I don’t think so, darling. I think all we need right now is a long, deep sleep.”

“Mmmmmm.” In all hon­esty, she didn’t have the en­ergy to ar­gue.

“Isn’t it time you un­tied me?” she asked after a few long minutes.

“I will. In a bit,” he replied, rub­bing her back with his hand. She sighed as he caressed her with long, slow strokes. It was sen­sual as well as com­fort­ing and Tania could only man­age a half-hearted wriggle of her bum to in­dic­ate her ap­pre­ci­ation of his ges­ture. She turned her head to one side and closed her eyes.

When she was al­most asleep, he slipped into bed next to her and held her close.

“Carl?”

“Hmmm?”

“You should really,” she yawned, “un­tie me.”

“I know. I will.” He paused for two heart­beats and there was a smile in his voice when he con­tin­ued. “Don’t you trust me?”

What a stu­pid ques­tion to ask. Of course she didn’t. They were rivals weren’t they, des­pite their in­cred­ible sexual chem­istry?

“No.” The one word was little more than a mumble. Her head felt so heavy. She bur­rowed her cheek deeper into the soft soft pil­low. Just a little rest then she’d
de­mand
Carl re­lease her. Right now, though, she was feel­ing so limp and con­tent.

So re­laxed.

A hand stroked her hair and low words soothed her already drowsy brain.

Just a little nap, she thought. A teeny, tiny...
yawn
...nap....

Tania woke to a strange sen­sa­tion in her up­per arms. She blinked. It was still pitch black, in­dic­at­ing—

No, it was the blind­fold! Damn, but she still had it on. Her hands, which were tied to the bed frame, were thank­fully loose. With a thumb, she eased the blind­fold up from her eyes and flipped it off her head, then stared around her bed­room in open-gaped sur­prise. Bright sun­light streamed in rib­bons through the half-closed blinds, form­ing a rippled pat­tern on the car­pet.

Sun­light? Blind­ing, un­for­giv­ing sun­light?

But, but her alarm was usu­ally set to a darker and more prom­ising six-thirty in the morn­ing! In dread, her skin sud­denly cold, Tania threw a fear­ful glance at the clock on her bed­side table.

10:30, it blinked.

“Shit!”

She couldn’t be late. Not today. Any damn day but not today!

Like light­ning, she shuffled to the end of the bed, picked up her clock and checked the set­tings. The alarm had been turned off. With pan­icked hands, she reached for her mo­bile. Off as well. And she knew who did it. Motive. Op­por­tun­ity. Arse­headed­ness.

Carl
fuck­ing
Orin.

“The rat bas­tard.” She stalked to the shower. “The low-down, con­niv­ing rat bas­tard.”

The all-im­port­ant meet­ing that had been on her mind for days, that had been con­sum­ing every avail­able neuron for months, was sched­uled for this morn­ing. Hell, it should have taken place two hours ago.

The thought of what she was missed, what she had
already
missed, sent Tania into over­drive. She had the shortest shower on re­cord. She changed into the first set of present­able clothes she could find, un­suc­cess­fully smooth­ing two deep wrinkles down the front of her jacket with the flat of her hand and swear­ing as she did so. Fi­nally, sigh­ing with ex­as­per­a­tion, she tugged a brush through her way­ward hair. Her black locks re­fused to co­oper­ate. Tania gave up, throw­ing the brush into the corner of her bed­room. She picked up her bag, dumped her phone in it and ran out of her apart­ment, head­ing for the car-park. An un­end­ing string of muttered curses fol­lowed her along her route.

The low-slung res­id­en­tial com­plex Tania cur­rently called home had been built, and was main­tained in its en­tirety, by Rim­shot In­dus­tries, her cur­rent em­ployer. A lot of sci­ent­ists, aca­dem­ics and high-tech con­sult­ants vis­ited Rim­shot’s main cam­pus and it was a lot more con­veni­ent, not to men­tion a sav­ing of time and awk­ward ques­tions, to have them bil­leted at the com­pany’s pur­pose-built ac­com­mod­a­tion quar­ters.

The com­plex it­self was airy and beau­ti­fully land­scaped with its own gym, swim­ming pool and sev­eral en­ter­tain­ment and so­cial rooms. If it wasn’t for the as­so­ci­ated work, Tania would have thought she was be­ing paid to stay at a high-class re­sort. But this morn­ing, she saw none of the tiling, warm tim­ber sur­rounds or sway­ing bam­boo land­scape screens as she bolted for her car.

At least the arse­hole hadn’t thought to take her keys away, al­though she wondered if that was that due more to for­get­ful­ness on his part.

“Arse­hole.” She beeped the re­mote sav­agely then tossed her bag onto the pas­sen­ger seat of her sleek little hy­brid sedan be­fore get­ting in.

“When I get my hands on that low-down, schem­ing, mor­ally vacu­ous….”

Gun­ning the en­gine, and glad of the light mid-morn­ing traffic, Tania drove to Rim­shot in a mood of ab­so­lute fury, not in the least re­pent­ant that she was us­ing pet­rol in­stead of the more eco­nom­ical elec­tric sys­tem. If it meant that she was closer to wip­ing the smirk off Carl Orin’s too-gor­geous, typ­ical blond-and-blue-eyed face, it was a sac­ri­fice worth mak­ing.

It took ten minutes to get to work. Ten pre­cious minutes which already com­poun­ded the ini­tial two hours of delay. Don Novak, the dir­ector of the pro­ject, was go­ing to have kit­tens when she fi­nally turned up. And, in her haste to pack, Tania sud­denly real­ised that she had for­got­ten to turn her mo­bile phone back on. She felt like pound­ing the steer­ing wheel but con­ten­ted her­self with grip­ping it tightly and ima­gin­ing it was Carl’s neck.

She stopped the car briefly at the com­pany’s se­cur­ity and mustered a small smile for Phil, the week­day morn­ing se­cur­ity guard. It wasn’t his fault the last six months of her life had sud­denly turned to shit. He raised the boom gate, gave her a cas­ual wave and she star­ted the hunt for a place to park.

The Rim­shot cam­pus sat on top of a hill, with two levels of avail­able car space ter­raced be­low it. Mut­ter­ing a curse, Tania noted that there were no va­cant spots at all on the up­per ter­race.

“Why should there be?” she said to her­self, resign­ing her­self to a longer walk up to the main build­ing. “Every­body else got to work on time.”

She turned into the first empty space she saw on the lower ter­race, grabbed her stuff and hopped out of the car.

“But no....”

She crossed the tar­mac.

“On this, the most im­port­ant day of my ca­reer....”

She sprin­ted up the stairs.

“The day when I ab­so­lutely had to be on time....”

She entered the build­ing and gave the desk guards an­other tight smile as she strode past them and through an­other door, head­ing for the goods el­ev­at­ors.

“I get fucked over....”

She jabbed vi­ciously at a but­ton, strid­ing into the empty car the mo­ment the doors opened, and rum­ma­ging through her bag. At least she still had her se­cur­ity card! Tania flashed it at the reader and, when the panel pinged and the light be­neath the reader turned green, she hit the but­ton for Base­ment Level Five.

“By the king of fuck­ing-over bas­tards.”

Most of Rim­shot’s busi­ness took place above the ground floor of the build­ing. When the ma­jor­ity of its em­ploy­ees thought about the base­ment levels, if they thought about them at all, they dis­missed them as stor­age or main­ten­ance sup­ply rooms. They cer­tainly didn't ex­pect the kind of high-tech en­vir­on­ment that un­fol­ded be­fore Tania’s eyes when the lift doors fi­nally slid open.

Tania took a deep breath, ad­jus­ted her top and jacket, then strode out, try­ing to ap­pear calm and un­ruffled.

The floor of Base­ment Five was set out like an open-plan of­fice.

Al­though each large cu­bicle was sep­ar­ated from its neigh­bour by a tall par­ti­tion, the screen was half-solid from waist-height down to the floor, fros­ted glass im­me­di­ately above the solid sec­tion, and clear at the top. Al­though such an ar­range­ment could not stop the feel­ing of be­ing a mouse in a maze, it mit­ig­ated it to a large ex­tent.

Tania didn’t stop at any of the cu­bicles to ex­change so­cial niceties with their in­hab­it­ants. Nor did she stop at her own per­sonal patch of ter­rit­ory. In­stead, her shoes scuff­ing softly on the low-pile car­pet, she made a beeline for the sec­tion after cu­bicle-land. That’s where all the im­port­ant dis­cus­sions took place.

She was stopped again by a large vault-like door. This time, her se­cur­ity card was not enough. She bent down to the large cir­cu­lar scope that pro­truded from the wall. It re­minded her of look­ing through a mi­cro­scope, ex­cept all she saw through the nar­row view­ing tube was a bright blue haze. After a few seconds, she heard an ac­know­ledging beep and the doors slid open.

Tania stepped in­side.

The area of Base­ment Five that Tania entered was very dif­fer­ent to the car­peted, of­fice-like at­mo­sphere she had left be­hind. The floor be­neath her feet was pol­ished con­crete, cool and gleam­ing. The walls, con­cave and metal­lic, sprouted slick and clean from the floor be­fore dis­ap­pear­ing into the ceil­ing.

Turn­ing left at the wall that con­fron­ted her, she con­tin­ued to fol­low the curve, fi­nally com­ing across a series of doors. There was one door on the right, sev­eral on the left. She walked up to the single door to her right, took a deep breath and pressed her hand against the ti­tanium al­loy. With a sigh, the panel slid open. She stepped in­side.

“He tricked you, didn’t he?”

Tania blinked at the words and looked into the calm grey eyes of the di­vi­sion’s chief, Don Novak. He was stand­ing at the desk closest to the door panel, a half-amused, half-ir­rit­ated look on his face.

Tania took one look at his ex­pres­sion and her strategy of ly­ing crumbled. She had pre­pared so many ex­cuses. My car broke down. I had to visit a sick friend. I got a sud­den toothache and had to pay an emer­gency visit to a dent­ist. What she most def­in­itely couldn’t say to Don Novak was that she had been tied up, de­li­ciously fucked and then played for a fool.

She de­cided on a wry smile and hoped it didn’t re­veal too much. “Yeah, he tricked me.”

Don held up a fin­ger. “I’d ask how but...I don’t think I want to know.”

There was still the hint of a ques­tion in his voice but Tania shook her head. This was one epis­ode in her life she was go­ing to for­get as quickly as she could. If she could.

“You
really
don’t want to know,” she as­sured him.

There was si­lence. A little un­com­fort­able on his part, she thought. She tensed when she saw him nervously lick his lips. Did he
know
what had gone on in her apart­ment the night be­fore? Was she about to get fired?

“I’m sorry Tania,” he said in a rush. “It was all-sys­tems go. The de­cision was made.”

Without her there, present­ing her own ar­gu­ments, her own skills and ex­per­i­ence? Her eyes widened in hor­ror. “No!”

After all this time, all the months of ex­haust­ing work, how could the board do this to her?

“They made the de­cision?” No, this couldn't be hap­pen­ing to her.

He nod­ded.

“How, Don? We both weren’t here this morn­ing. The board wouldn’t have had a chance to ab­sorb the last round of res­ults.” She paused and stared at him be­seech­ingly. “The least I ex­pec­ted was a post­pone­ment.”

Base­ment Five’s dir­ector didn’t say a word and Tania’s sense of frus­tra­tion rose.

“Do you know what I’ve been do­ing this past week?” she asked, a hard edge creep­ing into her voice. “Be­sides the usual work­load, which would ex­haust a pla­toon of de­velopers, I had a look at the pro­tocol is­sues we’ve been hav­ing lately. I think I know where we’re go­ing wrong. If the board would only re­con­sider, post­pone their de­cision un­til I’ve had time….”

Don shrugged, his lined and droopy eyes full of sym­pathy. Dur­ing the tri­als, he had treated her and Carl equally, al­though she al­ways got the faint im­pres­sion she was the one he fa­voured to take the first step into the un­known. But des­pite that, the board had gone ahead and Don hadn't stopped them. Had he failed her as well?

“The meet­ing was set for this morn­ing, as you know,” he said. “Carl was here. The board was here. We waited for you but Carl was…very per­suas­ive. As a res­ult, the spon­sors de­cided to give him first crack at it.”

“So he’s in the,” she jerked her head to­wards the far wall, in the dir­ec­tion of the in­ser­tion rooms. She wouldn’t say the words. That would make her fail­ure too real, too soon.